Today I saw an acupuncturist for the first time. I am having a nasty flare of “runner’s knee.” It sounds fairly benign, but what it means is that my knee cap is grinding into my femur. Gets pretty painful. Cutting out the longer runs and some physical therapy exercises have helped, but I decided to try an additional treatment, acupuncture, to see if I could get the inflammation under control.

The New Patient Form had a long list of physical and mental health symptoms and conditions, from cold feet to liver disease to depression, and I was asked to check off which applied to me.

One of the items on the list was “low libido.”

Libido is politically loaded. How, for example, is “low” libido measured? Relative to other women, whose sexual behavior has been socialized within the constructs of male-centered sexual culture? Or relative to men, who have had a monopoly on the political and social powers to construct all sexual paradigms?

Like “low” libido, decline in libido with age is also politically loaded. Decline in libido with age is increasingly constructed as unhealthy or not normal. But in truth, both Viagra and the ongoing search for a libido-boasting equivalent for women are driven by ageist paradigms (which insist normal aging is unhealthy) and hyper-sexism (which insists men must be able to lay a woman, or a man, to be a man). Therefore, older men must be able to get it up and get it on. And older women better keep up with them.

I am sure that most older women do not celebrate Viagra (do any?). If older women’s libidos are “low,” Viagra-pumped older men are going to screw other women—affairs, younger women, prostitutes. It’s a given.

Some [women whose husbands took Viagra] feared that Viagra would drive their partners to other women. Five of the 33 men confirmed that they had been unfaithful since taking the drug.

Moreover, Viagra is inducing a new form of rape:

A 48-year-old [woman] said: ‘It had such a powerful effect that … this made sex inevitable. Sometimes there was no discussion about whether … the sex act was going to take place, so it would be … ‘I’ve taken the pill, okay, let’s go.’ ‘

If (if) men have stronger libidos than women, then they can just masturbate to fill in the times they do not have a consenting partner and an equitable relationship. But no pornography, no strippers or prostitutes. No violent, coercive, or racist fantasies. No fantasies about younger women, teens or children. Because if anyone needs any of that to get stimulated, that is proof that libido is not the driving force.